What
do more than three thousand (3,000) years of FIV experience show us?

This project currently has just over 800 participating owners with
their FIV cats. The length of time of experience gained through each cat
ranges from less than a month to almost twenty years. When we add up all
the individual cats' experience, we have over 3,500 years in total.

Overall health picture:

It is often suggested that an FIV cat is likely to suffer repeated
illness from a number of ailments, so we wanted to show how the cats on
this project have fared.

The pie chart below shows that the idea that an FIV cat will suffer
much illness is not borne out by the experience of these cats.

The chart below is based on the reported health issues from all the
cats on the project. If you count up the individual years experience -
(eg. one cat living five years equals 5 FIV years) - then this chart is
based on around three thousand FIV years, so should be giving a
reasonably valid impression!

In fact, the degree of illness (14%) is almost certainly exaggerated,
as the individual health charts (see results page) are broken into 3
month segments (the smallest recordable period). Many owners report
minor infections that cleared up within a few days, yet these will show
as a minor illness for a three month segment - so overall, the amount of
illness is probably less than the charts indicate.

Also, the degree of seriousness of illness is somewhat subjective, so
the subdivisions between minor, medium and major should be taken as
approximate.

Remember, these are all
the ailments mentioned by owners; many of the ailments probably having
little, if anything, to do with FIV.

Healthy = 86% of time

Minor issues = 10.% of time

Medium issues = 3.% of time

Major issues = 1% of time

Based on a total of 3710 FIV years
(recorded from 803 FIV cats)

So, what are the illnesses they did
suffer from?

We are told by the text books that there are several health problems
that FIV+ cats suffer from. We now look at the experience of those cats
on the project to see what they actually suffered from.

It would seem that there are no specific health problems that could be
classed as common for FIV+ cats, just the usual list of issues that any
cat might suffer from.

Shown below are the health issues listed by the owners of the FIV+ cats
on the project; you will see that there are none that affect more than
about 20% of the cats - so not so common then!

Number

Percent

FIV
cats - Total

803

100%

Health
issues

Allergies

29

3.6%

Anaemia

29

3.6%

Arthritis

20

2.5%

Asthma

19

2.4%

Bartonella

8

1.0%

Cancer

60

7.5%

Cystitis

7

0.9%

Dental

163

20.3%

Diabetes

19

2.4%

Digestive

57

7.1%

Ear

47

5.9%

Eye

117

14.6%

Gingivitis

66

8.2%

Heart

39

4.9%

Herpes

11

1.4%

Kidney

56

7.0%

Liver

15

1.9%

Pancreatitis

13

1.6%

Respiratory

167

20.8%

Ringworm

9

1.1%

Seizure

12

1.5%

Skin

55

6.8%

Stomatitis

43

5.4%

Thrombosis

1

0.1%

Thyroid

20

2.5%

Urinary

50

6.2%

So, as you can see, there are no issues here that can be said to be
'common' in FIV cats; in fact, I wonder how different the results would
be if you studied a similar collection of non-FIV cats.

Prognosis

To help illustrate what prognosis might be expected for an FIV cat, we
have put together the following graphic display of the health of those
on this project.

Each cat listed on this project has a health chart which gives a visual
indication of the general state of health of the cat through the years.

The blue colour indicates a basically healthy period, and the mauve,
purple and red indicate health issues - the stronger the colour the more
serious the issue - the uncoloured sections are where their health is
unknown before the owner became involved with the cat; the black
indicates the end of the cat's life. All somewhat subjective, but this
is produced from what the owners report.

Below, you will see that we have put these together so you can view the
overall impression of the health of the cats as a group.

Any expected pattern of health should show with this grouping.

We have put the charts in order of age - If you scroll down through you
will see there is little indication of any general pattern throughout
the cats lives, other than more illness towards the end of life - I
doubt this would be much different for a similar group of non-FIV cats.

Obviously, this is not a scientific study, but is indicative of the
general health pattern of a large number of naturally infected FIV cats
living normal lives.

First we list the FIV cats who have come to the end of their lives, and
after that we list the FIV cats still living.

You can read the full report from the
owner of any individual cat - just click on an individual chart
to link to that individual's report (opens in new tab).